


My Sins Will Never Be Forgiven

by EchoResonance



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, yullentide 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 11:11:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5495030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoResonance/pseuds/EchoResonance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kanda has finally fulfilled his promises, and in doing so he's forgiven himself his follies. Allen envies him that, for he will never reach that state. There is no forgiveness for a person like him, locked in a cell in the dungeon of the only place he's ever called home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Sins Will Never Be Forgiven

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 3 of Yullentide: Absolution

Allen has been able to think of little else besides Alma Karma while he’s been locked up in his wonderfully cozy dungeon cell. The things he saw in Kanda’s memories...the horrors that filled his life from the very beginning… They’ve been consuming his waking thoughts, and sometimes they plague him even in sleep. The experiments and the cold and harsh treatment on  _ children _ are enough to make him sick to his stomach, and seeing them treated as though they were mere objects and not human children capable of emotion and of pain disgusted Allen. The fact that once Kanda had had a friend, a friend he loved dearly, and a friend he had been forced to kill with his own hand, makes a piece of Allen’s bruised and darkened heart break even now.

The worst part, though, is that Kanda has lived through all of that and has borne it alone and in silence. Allen knows what it’s like to be left alone, hurting and guilt-ridden because of the death of a loved one, unable to forgive himself and refusing to ask for help. He knows the feeling of the most important person in his world dying in front of him, blood staining his skin and soaking into his clothes and promising that he would never smell anything but iron and salt again. He knows what it is to be directly responsible for the death of someone he cares about, to carry that guilt with him like a second skin.

Maybe they’ve dealt with the pain in different ways, but the pain itself is the same. They have both sinned, and are guilty of the same mistakes, and have spent a long time trying to atone for their wrongs in ways they thought best. Allen, by adopting the mask of Mana and being the person he thought Mana would have wanted him to be. Kanda, by refusing himself the one thing he may have wanted, because he knew he didn’t deserve companionship after he killed the only friend he’d ever known.

However…

“At least you finally got your closure, right, Kanda?” Allen sighs to the empty room.

Kanda has fulfilled the promise he made to Alma a lifetime ago. At long last, he’s managed to lay his burdens down and bury them, and forgive himself and his old friend for their pains and their mistakes. He’s been freed from the hell inside his head. Allen doesn’t resent that in the least, he can’t if he tries. After all, he’s the one that sacrificed everything to give Kanda that chance, that brief opportunity that he then seized with both hands, and he’s nothing but glad that he’s managed at last to see some deeper part of Kanda, and that he’s managed to help the swordsman find peace. 

However, he does envy Kanda that peace, because Allen knows he’ll never be forgiven, not by himself, or by the God that has forsaken him. He is the enemy of the only place he’s ever called home because there is a Noah’s memory buried inside him, the enemy of the Noahs because he’s still an Exorcist, and he is a danger to everyone around him because he can’t control the Fourteenth. He is his own worst nightmare, and he can’t find a single thing that might redeem himself.

_ Is it selfish to wish you were here? _ Allen wonders, drawing his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around his legs. 

As often as they butted heads, Allen would be lying if he says that Kanda never brought him some relief; a short reprieve from his exhausting days being the person Mana wanted, rather than the person at his core. He’s never had to pretend around Kanda, never had any reason to maintain the facade he knew the man saw through anyway, he’s never been anything but himself in front of the swordsman, and though it’s a side of him he isn’t proud of, he always appreciated the moments when he didn’t have to try. Moments that have now gone.

Kanda has forgiven himself and found forgiveness from others, and in doing so he’s been relieved of his sins. Allen will never find that absolution.


End file.
